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1.1 iOS/Android-Based Firmware Updates for SimpleLink Devices: Introduction
Hello, everyone. This is part 1 of a three-part series about performing BLE based firmware updates of your SimpleLink device using both Android and iOS platforms. In this first session, we will introduce you to the basics of the SimpleLink SDK plugin ecosystem, as well as present a high level overview of the SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin. In this introduction, we will cover the embedded aspects of the over the air firmware update code example that will be used as a foundation for the subsequent iOS and Android programming sessions. The SimpleLink SDK ecosystem is a flagship software offering provided by Texas Instruments that enables users to fully utilize every aspect of their SimpleLink MCU device. The SimpleLink SDK will provide everything from a full featured Real Time Operating System, or RTOS, to common peripheral centric device drivers that will scale across all SimpleLink device families. By having a portable and robust software layer sitting between the user code and the device, users are able to develop their applications for one SimpleLink platform and extend or port the same application with ease to any device in the SimpleLink portfolio. SimpleLink SDK plugins are designed to extend the functionality of the underlying platform SDK. As platform SDKs are architected to show off the differentiating factor of the underlying MCU, SDK plugins give the ability to extend this functionality to use cases that are not part of the MCU's immediate functionality set. Examples of this range from providing common interface to external sensors via the Sensor Actuator Interface Library plugin, or SAIL, to enabling WiFi or BLE functionality to an MCU with no integrated wireless capabilities. It is important to note that, while extensive, SimpleLink SDK plugins are not standalone software packages. They emphatically have an underlying software dependency on the SDK that they are extending. Typically these dependencies take the shape of TI drivers and RTOS interaction. One example of a SimpleLink SDK plugin is a SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin. The SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin is designed to provide a portable and fluid software layer to enable the use of a BLE radio on an MCU that does not have integrated BLE capabilities. Two examples of MCUs that the BLE plugin supports are the MSP432 MCU and the CC3220 MCU. The MSP432 provides a feature rich and unparalleled analog offering, as well as a very generous flash memory footprint of up to 2 megabytes. The CC3220 provides integrated WiFi functionality with a plethora of different security and IOT features. The SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin is a software layer that sits on top of the corresponding host MCU SDK. The software layer will provide a common set of drivers between both the CC3220 and MSP432 that can be used to manipulate, control, and configure an attached BLE radio. In this case, the BLE radio takes the shape of either a CC2640R2 or CC2650. The connection is done by a combination of standard UART for data flow, as well as a couple of GPIO lines to help minimize power consumption. By using the CC26XX device as a proxy, the underlying MCU can then communicate with a BLE central device, such as an iOS or Android device. Parts 2 and 3 of this training module will demonstrate in copious detail how to communicate with an embedded system using these two mobile frameworks. The fundamental building block of the SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin is a Simple Application Processor library, commonly referred to as a SAP library. The SAP library provides a high level API driver that is used to configure and manipulate all different aspects of a connected CC26XX BLE radio. In this 2-chip solution, the host MCU is referred to as a simple application processor. And the attached CC26XX BLE radio is referred to as the Simple Network Processor, or SNP. The advantage to using the SAP and SNP setup is that the code that runs on the CC26XX SNP is a complete black box solution. All of the application code by the programmer is written in the host MCU device, enabling the utilization of the increased memory footprint and differentiated peripherals. All of the low level UART and serial interaction is abstracted away from the application code using a combination of device common TI drivers and POSIX calls to the underlying operating system. While the application running on the CC26XX SNP is a black box solution that is distributed as a hex file as part of the BLE plugin, it is also provided in full source code as part of the CC26XX SDK release. This fosters transparency enables you to completely modify or customize all of the embedded software and the solution. The Over the Air Download, commonly referred to as OAD, code example is a code example that's provided with a SimpleLink SDK BLE plugin that allows the programmer to completely update not only the firmware running on the host MSP432P4 device, but also the firmware that is running on the CC26XX SNP device as well. This is accomplished by taking advantage of the MSP432P4's dual flash bank architecture. In this flow diagram, we will take a look at the various steps and tasks that are required in order to update the firmware running on the MSP432P4. As a first step, the host central device, usually a mobile application, will initiate the firmware download by sending a preliminary metadata to the device over BLE. Once accepted, the host device will send the entire firmware image to the MSP432P4 where it will subsequently store it and its second flash bank. Note that this will limit the size of firmware downloads to half of the available flash storage area. For example, on an MSP432P4111 device with a memory footprint of two megabytes, the max firmware image can be one megabyte. Once the firmware image download is complete, the application code running on the MSP432P4 does several different steps. First, it verifies through the metadata that the image is a valid application image and that no corruption occurred during transfer. Next, they'll set a special flag and a persistent SRAM variable and reset the device. From the reset, a custom bootloader takes over and recognizes that a new application firmware image is available. The custom bootloader will then proceed to flash the new firmware image to the reserved application space. Once complete, the device is reset, and the application code running on the MSP432P4 has been updated. The process for updating the firmware running on the CC26XX is very similar. Once the central device connects to the system, initiates the update, and has its firmware accepted, the SNP image is downloaded to the second flash bank of the MSP432P4. Similar to the application image download, once complete, the application code will perform various checks to the integrity of the firmware image. Once verified the MSP432P4 will invoke the UART ROM bootloader on the CC26XX device. It is important to note that the same UART are pins used for SAP communication are also utilized by the CC26XX's UART bootloader. Now the MSP432P4 will update the SNP image of the CC26XX over the UART line. Once complete, the MSP432 will initiate a reset of both the SNP and itself. And the new firmware image running on the CC26XX will be available for the application to use. The MSP432P4 BLE firmware updater is a minimalistic mobile application available for both Android and iOS. The point of this application is to provide a reference solution for programmers to download, modify, and refactor into to their end equipment's mobile solution. Both solutions heavily utilize the underlying frameworks of Android and iOS in order to provide a lean and efficient solution that customers can easily pick up and modify. In addition to being posted on the respective app stores, both solutions are provided in full BSD licensed source code on the TI website. All of the various programming aspects that drive the MSP432P4 BLE firmware updater will be covered in detail in the next two sessions of the series. Thanks for watching this training. For more information, refer to the links below. If you have any questions, please go to the E2E community forums at e2e.ti.com.
Watch the next video in the series:
iOS-driven BLE Firmware Updates for SimpleLink Platforms
Details
Date:
April 11, 2018
This training provides an introduction to iOS/Android-Based BLE firmware updates for SimpleLink devices.
PDFs for download
intro-simplelink-oad-firmware-updates.pdf
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